


putting trust in an entire half-empty glass

by ODed_on_jingle_jangle



Series: for you, above all [1]
Category: Dare Me (TV 2019), Dare Me - Megan Abbott
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon - Book & Movie Combination, Coming Out, Complicated Relationships, F/F, Mild Blood, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prom, Reconciliation, School Dances, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:55:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23165101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ODed_on_jingle_jangle/pseuds/ODed_on_jingle_jangle
Summary: Addy trots across the distance left between them and catches Beth’s hands. The last time they were here, those hands held a gun and aimed it right at her face, but somehow, Addy thinks even then she was more afraid for Beth than herself. Beth’s laughter breaks as Addy intertwines their fingers.“I know you have a future, Beth, because I always see you in mine.”“What do you see, Addy?” she huffs, somewhere between hopeful and over it. “Something simple and pretty?”
Relationships: Beth Cassidy/Addy Hanlon
Series: for you, above all [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1667389
Comments: 12
Kudos: 212





	putting trust in an entire half-empty glass

**Author's Note:**

> An anon asked me if I would ever write a Beth/Addy happy end. I told them I didn't know cause happy things aren't usually my schtick, even though a happy Beth/Addy end is something I would like to see. But as of right now, we don't know if we'll get a second season or if these two will ever be happy. 
> 
> So here's a thing where they get to be a little happy. Blending series and book canon. Mild book spoilers ahead, but Beth taking her swan dive, so to speak, does not happen here. Nonetheless, there are references to vaguely suicidal ideation, so beware of that. Also, in this fic, Addy/Beth's moment is the sweeter, more innocent rain kiss of the series as opposed to the more sexually charged, alcohol influenced moment in the book.
> 
> Also, since Sutton Grove is a small town, I'm just assuming all the high school students are invited to attend prom, regardless of grade. I went to a small high school and that's how it was simply because there weren't enough students to do separate junior/senior proms. This also happened at my friend's school, which was even smaller than mine.

Coach is an accomplice to murder in the second degree. Sutton Grove buzzes over the headline like a kicked wasp’s nest. It’s the first genuinely scandalous thing that’s happened in this dinky town in years. Since before Addy was even born, probably. 

She listens to everyone talk at school, in excited, too-loud whispers, shocked and horrified murmurs. They’re like vultures, devouring the gossip and picking apart every juicy morsel of Will, of Matt, of Coach. Shredding every sinew that remains. 

They talk and talk and talk, but none of them get it right. 

Addy is the only one who knows the real story. 

Well. 

Maybe not quite…

* * *

When it really hits her that Coach isn’t coming back, at first Addy feels as if she's been gutted. Guts scooped right out of her the deep, digging way she scoops ice cream out of the massive cartons at the Dairy Cream— or the way she did before she quit anyway, quit to become Caitlin’s practically full-time babysitter. For three months, Coach was here and she was all consuming. 

Addy hung on every word that left her lips. Especially the way they shaped around her name. When she would praise Addy’s tenacity in front of the other girls. When she would call out to Addy after practice, beckoning with a playful finger. When she would let her gunmetal guard down and talk to Addy like a dear friend, like she was endlessly more to Coach than just her pupil. 

For three months, Coach was here and Addy felt like she was going somewhere. Like Coach had given her the chance to go somewhere, placed the roadmap to the top right in Addy’s hands. 

Now she’s gone and she’s not coming back. And Addy doesn’t know if it was worth her coming here at all. Driving the wedge deeper between her and Beth. Being teased with a shot at a scholarship that she’ll surely lose out on now. Stepping on Will’s teeth and learning the secrets of death in his eyes. 

Knowing Coach was like embracing a forest fire. For three months, Addy blazed with her, alight with passion and dangerously inexhaustible. Now she’s all burned up, left empty and wanting and wasted. 

She goes running twice as much, not just to stay in shape, but to escape it all. To tire herself out so when she goes home, she’ll fall into bed and her sleep with be undaunted, black nothingness. Sometimes she sees Beth too. 

Then she and Beth run the rest of their route, together, side by side. They run and they don’t talk, just run, panting in unison with sweat glistening on their bodies. Seeing Beth like this, in the moonlight, hair damp, droplets beaded on her skin…

It makes Addy remember the taste of her mouth. So she stares forward instead, pumps her arms harder, pushes her legs faster. Outruns her memories and all her feelings too. 

* * *

Addy and Beth don’t talk until the day that they do. It happens after Jordy Jones asks her to prom. 

Addy laughs in his face. Yeah, it’s probably cruel, probably unnecessary. But it just catches her off guard and she can’t help herself. She cackles like a witch on a broomstick, tears beading at the corners of her eyes. 

“Hard pass,” she huffs, wiping them away with the backs of her hands. “Sorry. Go ask Tacy, m’kay, Jones? You’ll have better luck there.” 

Tacy could always be counted on to take Addy’s rejects or Beth’s leftovers. Addy gives him an apologetic clap on the shoulder and struts away, leaving him at her locker, cherry red with embarrassment. 

Addy searches until she finds Beth in the cafeteria, repeatedly stabbing her fork into a cup of grapefruit without much interest in actually eating it. 

“Hey,” Addy says. 

Beth blinks up at her, almost startled. “Hey.” 

“Do you wanna get out of here?” Addy asks. “Cut class, head out to Lanvers?” 

“It’s been awhile since we’ve done that,” Beth says. 

“Yeah. It has.” 

Beth impales a fat chunk of grapefruit on the prongs of her fork. She pops it into her mouth and chews deliberately, red juice leaking between her lips. She swallows and swipes her tongue over her lips, licking it all away. 

“I’ll drive,” she decides. 

* * *

At Lanvers, they get out of Beth’s Jeep and wander around aimlessly, kicking at pine cones and pebbles. The scent of loam is thick in the air. Sunshine dapples through the leaves. 

Addy tries not to think about Beth with wild eyes and an aching heart, pointing a gun right in her face. Addy tries not to think about Coach and Will lying on the blanket, Will teasingly tracing a leaf across her arm and Coach’s fond smile. 

“I’m sorry she broke your heart,” Beth blurts suddenly, as if reading Addy’s mind. 

“No you’re not,” Addy replies, rolling her eyes. 

_You’re actually thrilled about it because I broke your heart first,_ she thinks. _The way you once told me I would._

“Well…maybe I’m sorry about other things,” Beth says, just a touch of a quaver in her voice as something twitches over her face and the toe of her tennis shoe catapults a pine cone about ten feet into the air. 

Addy pauses, measures Beth up with her eyes. 

“Are you really?” 

“Fuck,” Beth hisses between her teeth, hands briefly spasming with the need for something to do before she settles on gruffly tightening her ponytail. 

“Beth…” 

“How was I supposed to know!?” she snaps, those wide white teeth of hers bearing in a defensive snarl. “I just thought he’d leave her! I thought he’d just pack up and go, send divorce papers in the mail like every other normal, humdrum husband who gets cheated on by his bombshell wife! How the fuck was I supposed to know he’d go totally psycho!?” 

Addy swallows, meanders toward her friend in slow steps. “You couldn’t have known one way or the other. That’s why you never should’ve sent that video. You can’t assume you know what someone else is going to do. People are unpredictable. Even the ones who seem as boring and blank as Matt French did…” 

“Too late to take it back now.” Beth throws her hands above her head and abruptly brings them down, smacking against her thigh with a sharp, slapping sound. Addy’s sure there are marks beneath her palms. “I have to live with this for the rest of my life, Addy.” 

“Does it help if I tell you Sarge Will wanted to die?” 

“What?” Beth’s face screws up. 

Addy tucks her hands into her pockets and shifts her weight from foot to foot. 

“I saw Coach at the police station. She talked to me when they let her take a smoke break and she told me how Will looked before he got shot. She saw it in his face and Matt did too, that he wanted to die.” 

Beth stands straighter, arms falling to her sides.

“Are you sure they weren’t just seeing what they wanted to see?” She fixes Addy with a piercing look. “We both know how it goes with people only looking at what they want to, only seeing the things they want to be there.” 

Addy feels a twinge of guilt and gulps it back. 

“I’m sure. Look, I know you didn’t like it but I hung out with Coach and Will a lot. Like, all the time.” 

“No shit,” Beth snorts. 

“And Will was…off. He was a nice guy so you didn’t notice it at first, but the more you were around him, the more you saw it. The more you felt it. Like his life was an empty room. Coach took his gun in the first place because he kept saying all this scary shit, like he was seconds away from the edge…” 

Beth is quiet for a moment. She breathes in through her nose, absently fingers at the naked skin of her throat that nothing has touched since she found her necklace broken. 

“Colette took Will’s gun because he was scaring her.” 

“Yes.” 

“Well, how about you, Addy?” Beth jerks her head back, looks to the sky instead of meeting Addy’s eyes. “What would you do if I started scaring you?” 

Addy stiffens. “What do you mean?” 

“I have to live with getting someone murdered for the rest of my life—“ 

“It wasn’t—“ 

“—but how long is that going to be, Addy?” Beth grates out, and it sounds like there’s something stuck in her throat. “I’m not like you. You’re always thinking about the future, getting out of Sutton Grove, going to college and picturing all these places life could take you. But when I try to think about the future, I don’t see anything…not a single fucking thing.” 

Addy realizes the implications of this and alarm flashes through her, blood running ice cold. 

“Oh,” she gasps, hushed as dread seats itself in her stomach, hard and heavy as a boulder. 

“Am I scaring you, yet?” Beth laughs darkly, almost deliriously. It’s really her way of crying. “Are you going to take my gun, Addy?” 

“You don’t have a gun, Beth.” 

More laughter, midnight dark and pealing. “I don’t need a gun.” 

Beth waves her hands back and forth, still laughing, still secretly crying. She cries the way she tells the truth. Through lies that aren’t really meant to be lies at all, sincerity lurking beneath every performance as long as you tilt your head the right way and squint. 

Addy trots across the distance left between them and catches Beth’s hands. The last time they were here, those hands did hold a gun and aimed it right at her face, but somehow, Addy thinks even then she was more afraid for Beth than herself. Beth’s laughter breaks as Addy intertwines their fingers. 

“I know you have a future, Beth, because I always see you in mine.” 

“What do you see, Addy?” she huffs, somewhere between hopeful and over it, over everything. “Something simple and pretty?” 

“Sometimes,” Addy admits. “Our wedding is, at least.” 

Beth blinks rapidly, lips parting. “Our wedding…” 

“Yeah,” Addy continues even though her heart squeezes in her chest, like this might not be a good idea after all. It’s too late to turn back. 

She leans in and rests her forehead against Beth’s, closing her eyes as she pictures it. They’re nearly thirty, maybe even. On a hilltop in the summer, honeysuckle tickling their nostrils and butterflies carelessly fluttering about. Beth a slender picture of sophistication in a classy black suit, smiling the same smile she had at sixteen when Addy had first kissed her, as she lifts Addy’s ivory veil to share their new first kiss; the one that will be their first kiss as wife and wife. 

She doesn’t even realize she’s described the scene out loud until Beth laughs a soft laugh that is just that— a laugh —and her warm breath tickles Addy’s cheeks. 

“You think of me in a suit?” 

“Yeah,” Addy says, tentatively smiling. “You’d look good in a suit.”

“I would,” Beth breathes another laugh, gentle and content. “No regular groom shoes though. I want heels. Shiny black pumps. Let’s be the same height when we kiss, okay?” 

“Okay,” Addy agrees warmly. 

For a moment they have this. This moment that is as simple and pretty as her fantasy. But then Beth lets go of her hands and reality resumes, anything but simple and pretty. 

“If that’s what you see in your future, us, together…then why have you been pushing me away ever since the moment we kissed?” Beth slowly steps backwards from her. “Are you just telling me what you think I want to hear?” 

“No, Beth it’s…it’s because I got scared,” she admits, deflating. 

“Of what?” Beth balks. 

“All of it. Everything.” Addy gives a little shrug. “You’ve been my best friend as long as I can remember. If we took it to the next level and things got bad, it could’ve been like killing our friendship.” 

“From the way I see it, our friendship’s pretty dead anyway. And you did that, Addy. You killed it.” Beth crosses her arms. 

Addy flinches, hurt jumping into her chest. “Come on. It wasn’t just about that, Beth, god, you get bored so easily! Don’t you realize that? If I gave you what you wanted, would you have even cared at all when Coach showed up?” 

“Of course! I knew she was bad news, Addy, I wanted to protect you. I wanted to protect my girl.” 

“Did you? Did you want to protect me or possess me?” Addy challenges. 

“I was right! Look at what she put you through!” 

“What about what you put me through?” Addy goes on. “We kissed and it’s not that I didn’t want us to be together, Beth, or that I didn’t know what you wanted. Believe me, I knew what you wanted. But what would’ve happened if I gave it to you?” 

“Well, we wouldn’t be here, for starters!” Beth tosses her head, sucks her lower lip between her teeth. “Maybe we’d be happy!” 

“Or maybe once you had what you wanted, you would’ve gotten bored of it. Of me,” Addy proposes with a cynical sigh. “Just like you got bored of cutting, got bored of all your boy toys, and got bored of every juice cleanse that crossed our social media feed…” 

“You don’t seriously think that?” Beth gawks.

“I don’t know, I didn’t know what to think. The way we work is kind of twisted, these games we keep playing with each other, these silent power struggles. I hate it. I love it.” Addy rubs her hands together. “If we got together, maybe we’d get over all of that, and things would get dull between us and you’d just leave me behind.” 

“You’re the one who left me behind,” Beth bites out, sharp. “As soon as Colette showed up, you left me in the dust.” 

“I didn’t want to get left behind first,” Addy says, heart wringing behind the safety of her rib cage. “There was a lot going through my head, Beth. I didn’t want to lose you as a friend, I didn’t want you to get bored of me, and even cheer, Beth— you’d been bored of cheer for so long that you weren’t serious about it anymore! About getting better! And Coach was!” 

“I didn’t think we had to be! I thought we were good enough!” 

“You were good enough. You’re Top Girl. Everyone saw you. But I needed to be better, I needed to be good enough to stand out without being a flyer.” Addy swallows and nervously rubs her wrists. “Besides, you…you told RiRi I kissed you.” 

“Yeah, I did. And do you know what I told her?” Beth tips her head. “I told her it was the most beautiful moment of my life. You kissed me, it was the most beautiful moment of my life, and then you went and pretended like it never happened. Like the best thing that ever happened to me was just something I made up.” 

“I didn’t want anybody to know, Beth…” 

“Why?” Beth throws her hands up. “It’s the twenty-first century, Addy! People aren’t going to show up at your house with pitchforks and torches just because you like girls! What are you so ashamed of?” 

“I’m not ashamed!” Addy argues, feeling like there’s thorns in her throat. “I just like my private life private, okay? Sutton Grove is the size of a fish bowl! Once one person knows something, everybody else knows it too, and I don’t think it’s wrong to not want the whole town up in my business!” 

“I guess that’s fair,” Beth admits after a beat, some of the tension leaking from her face. “I shouldn’t have told RiRi. But how was I supposed to know what was okay to say and not to say when we never talked about it again? We never talked about it, Addy. We kissed, and then we never talked about it.” 

“I guess we’re talking about it now,” Addy says dubiously. 

“We are.” 

“Jordy Jones asked me to the prom,” Addy blurts. 

Beth snorts. 

“I laughed at him. I only hung out with him because Coach said I should. Kissing Jordy was like kissing cardboard.” 

“How about kissing me?” Beth asks, lifting her chin. “Since we’re allowed to talk about it now.” 

“It was the most beautiful moment of my life,” Addy returns Beth’s words quietly, shoulders slumping as months’ worth of heavy secrets crumble away. “I never stopped thinking about it. I never stopped wanting to do it again.” 

Beth steps back into Addy’s space, peering up at her with warmth in her eyes. 

“What are you waiting for?” 

Addy takes Beth’s face in her hands, thumbs hovering near her earlobes. She presses her lips to Beth’s, softly at first, and then harder as Beth presses back. Beth’s hands come to rest against Addy’s hips as she opens her mouth against the exploratory, poking tip of Addy’s tongue. 

This kiss is the furthest thing from cardboard. It feels exciting, it feels right, it feels like love. 

When they eventually pull apart, thin, silvery strands of saliva snap between their lips. Beth is still holding her hips and Addy doesn’t want to let go of her face. They laugh like they once laughed before, when their lives were less complicated and nothing that hurt, hurt quite so bad. 

“Do you want to go to prom with me?” Addy asks, giddy on the kiss and suddenly, ferociously eager to dance with Beth. 

“I don’t know, Hanlon,” Betty hums, pointedly arching a brow. “Other people will be there.” 

“I don’t care anymore. I cared when you told RiRi, but…so much has happened since then, Beth. Too much. Let’s just do something normal. Like prom.” 

“Normal,” Beth repeats. “Kind of. Can you believe the committee picked a ‘haunted house’ theme? With everything that’s happened?” 

“Pfft. They let us do the Deadman’s Fall routine ten seconds after we held a moment of silence for Will, with the finger guns and everything.” 

Beth shakes her head. “You know what, Addy? You’re right. This town is awful, it’s morbid as shit. After graduation, let’s get the fuck out of here.” 

* * *

  
Bert gives them his card to go shopping for prom. It’s weird to come back to things like prom after Coach. After Will. After every disturbing thing Addy has seen and done. 

Part of her wonders why Coach never brought her name into it. Addy was an accomplice too. She didn’t wipe anything down like Coach did, never covered specifically for Matt French because up until it was public knowledge what he’d done, Addy hadn’t actually known he’d done it at all. Until that moment, she believed it was suicide, because she too had seen things in Will’s face, simply hadn’t realized what those things were until Coach gave her the play-by-play of his last night on this earth. 

But she’s still an accomplice, isn’t she? She drove Coach away from the crime scene. She kept her mouth shut about all of it, every wretched thing she saw.

Addy realizes, in hindsight, that she’d been used. But she hasn’t been arrested, or even questioned by police. Which means Coach kept her name out of it, even after everything else was brought to light. It makes Addy wonder if Coach did care about her. If there was something genuine in their friendship after all…

But at the end of the day, that’s a dangerous line of thinking and Addy understands that now. 

She chooses not to think about Coach. Chooses not to venture to the bad places her mind will go if she does think about Coach. She chooses to wrap herself up in the frivolities of prom instead. Going to prom with Beth, shopping for prom with Beth. 

They spend the day hopping from store to store, trying on dress after dress, stuffing their time up with silliness. There is safety in the silliness. Stepping into overpriced shoes just because they can and strutting around in them. Slinging cute clutches over their shoulders even if they don’t match their dresses. Getting free makeovers at the fancy makeup store and milkshakes after, just because they can. 

Beth makes fun of Addy for getting vanilla. 

“You’re too dirty for vanilla,” she snickers. 

“Guess I better take yours then,” Addy teases, swiping Beth’s mud pie milkshake out of her hand and sucking in a gulp so big it gives her instant brain freeze. 

Beth snatches it back as Addy groans, hands flying to her aching forehead. 

“That’s what you get for being a thief,” Beth tells her cheekily, straw between her teeth. 

Addy crumbles her own straw’s paper wrapper into a little ball and flicks it at Beth’s face. 

When they leave the restaurant, they do so hand in hand and it doesn’t even matter a little bit that their fingers are sticky from the dessert. And they don’t immediately run to the bathroom to puke their milkshakes up like they would’ve while Coach was around. They let themselves digest and Addy doesn’t even hate herself for it, because the way Beth’s smiling at her shoves every stupid afterthought out of her head. 

For the time being, it’s all that matters. They’re normal teenage girls— normal teenage girlfriends. No more dead bodies, no more nightmares, just a prom to get ready for and Bert’s credit card to run up. 

* * *

  
When the night actually comes, Addy wears her hair naturally. She does it up in a pretty puff of a bun on top of her head, wears a purple ribbon to match her purple dress. Both she and Beth wanted to stick to the theme, ghoulish though it was. 

Addy ended up picking out this dress that looked semi-Victorian inspired, deep, royal purple fabric with a modestly ruffled neckline. Elegant skirt like a bell until the shins, wherein more pronounced layers of black and purple ruffles went the rest of the way down.

Beth picked out something Addy imagined a vampire would wear to prom. Strapless, tight black bodice. An uneven, satin scarlet skirt overlaid with several layers of lacy black fabric, reminding Addy of tastefully woven cobwebs. 

“You look beautiful,” her mom praises, looking up from her book when Addy enters the room. 

“Thanks.” Addy smiles. “I’m off to pick up Beth, alright?” 

“Sure. Remember to take pictures for me.” 

Addy nods and heads to the door. Her fingers hover over the knob and then she glances back. 

“Mom?” 

“Hm?” 

“Beth and I…we’re not going as friends,” Addy confesses softly. Because if she’s going to bring home pictures, she might as well be honest about what they’ll be of. “She’s my date.” 

Faith slowly closes her book, sets it down. She offers Addy a smile as gentle as lamb’s fleece and inclines her head in a nod. 

“Okay. Treat her right, Adelaide. That girl’s had a tough go of it.” 

Addy exhales a sigh of relief and quickly bobs her head. “Yeah, I know, Mom.” 

“Don’t let her walk over you either, though.” 

“I won’t. There are some, uh, new understandings between Beth and I.” 

“I’d certainly think so, if you’re going on a date.” 

Addy smiles again. “Yeah. Goodnight, Mom.” 

She ducks out, hurrying to her car. She’s driven to Beth’s house a hundred times before, but the anticipation bubbling in her stomach is different tonight. When she pulls in the driveway, she gets out and practically races to the front porch, jamming her finger against the doorbell. 

A few heartbeats later, Beth answers the door and takes Addy’s breath away. Chestnut hair pulled back into a fishtail braid. Striking red lipstick the same shade as her skirt. Lacy black gloves up to her forearms. 

“How do I look?” she asks. 

“Like the most gorgeous vampire I’ve ever seen,” Addy murmurs in awe. 

“Complete the look for me?” Beth asks, opening her hand. In her palm rests a necklace, a ruby heart dangling from a velvet black choker strap. “I couldn’t get the clasp by myself.” 

“Sure.” Addy takes it from her and Beth turns around, brushing her braid over her shoulder and revealing the lovely nape of her neck. 

Addy can’t help herself. She ghosts a kiss over the skin and feels Beth flush warm beneath her lips. 

“Who’s the vampire now?” she teases. 

“Vampires don’t kiss, they bite.” Addy places the choker around Beth’s neck and secures the clasp. 

“At least you know what you’re in for tonight then,” Beth purrs, winking at Addy as she whisks back around. 

Something warm blooms in Addy’s belly as she wonders if it’s true. Before she can think too hard about it, Beth pulls another necklace out of her coffin-shaped clutch. 

“Now let me do you.” 

“Ooh. You got us matching necklaces?” 

This one is just like hers, only the heart is amethyst instead of ruby. 

“Well, I knew we weren’t going to have corsages, but I thought we should have something.” 

“I like these better anyway,” Addy hums as Beth returns the kiss she placed on the nape of her neck and true to her word, gently scrapes her teeth over the skin before nibbling it in a brief love bite. “Ow! Hey!” 

“It didn’t really hurt, you big baby,” Beth puffs playfully. 

She secures the choker around Addy’s neck. Then she loops her arm through Addy’s and they walk down the steps like lovers. It feels so excitingly new and yet so comfortably familiar at the same time. 

“Bert offered to rent a limbo for the whole squad,” Beth tells Addy inside the car. “But I like this better. Just you and me.” 

“Just you and me,” Addy agrees, meaning it this time in a way she hadn’t meant at Regionals.   


The gym is packed and decorated fully with the aesthetic of the inappropriately selected theme. Sticks of candles green like toxic waste in gothic holders all over. Gauzy fake cobwebs dressing the walls and big, hairy fake spiders stuck in them. White sheet ghosts with stupid faces scrawled on them hanging from the ceiling. 

Someone spiked the punch with schnapps and students are already buzzed up, stumbling around. As soon as the music starts, Addy puts her arms around Beth. From the corner of her eye, she sees Jordy Jones’s nose scrunch up, Tacy already boozed and sloppy in his grasp. Then from the opposite corner there’s Micheal, smiling freely like he hasn’t done since before Will’s death and flashing her an encouraging thumb’s up. 

“Eyes on your girl,” Beth reminds her. 

Addy hums a compliant sound and quickly turns her attention back to Beth, even tightens her grip on Beth’s waist. Beth beams at her, arms looped around Addy’s neck as they sway together. The last time they danced, it was at the sarge’s memorial. It was something to take solace in, but not something to enjoy. 

This dance, Addy is enjoying. She isn’t weighed down with secrets anymore. She has Beth in her arms and she isn’t afraid that there will be consequences for this, for their friendship or otherwise. Because she feels confident that this is where Beth truly wants to be, dancing together as the music floats through the air and the fog from the machine swirls around their ankles. She’s no longer worried that Beth will get bored of her or that their silent battles will steal her chances of becoming what she wants to be. 

At the end of the song, Addy kisses Beth in the middle of the gym and doesn’t give a single shit that Cori grunts a noise of dissent as she forks five dollars over to RiRi. The only thing that really matters is the way she unfurls with Beth’s lips to hers, skin tingling and insides squished into a sentimental mush. Beth tilts her head as she deepens the kiss and Addy knows their mouths are going to be a mess, purple and red lipstick smearing together. That doesn’t matter either.

Beth’s tongue slides into her mouth and Addy knows nothing but the sweetest shooting stars. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a song.
> 
> Edit: Fixing some typos.


End file.
